


there will be time

by preromantics



Category: Actor RPF, American Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:56:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which a vague government take-over has phased out all forms of art and expression, and wherein Chris becomes an accidental revolutionary leader, sort of. <i>Being in Zach's new apartment in the complex is different than being in his own; somehow it seems more like home, a fact Chris doesn't like to dwell on for too long.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	there will be time

It's only some days that Chris really notices the difference. He walks the same two paths almost daily: the three blocks to the book-sorting factory where he's been assigned and the mile to Zach's apartment complex.

Lake Street used to have posters and billboards advertising concerts, up-coming movies, art galleries; now it has nothing, just painted over blank spaces and a few boarded up stores. There is a boarded up movie theater, too, that Chris doesn't like to look at when he walks by. The boards are always covered up with fliers advertising illegal concerts and plays, sure to be ripped off or painted over by the next morning.

The walk to Zach's apartment is sort of depressing and bleak, but Chris finds himself looking forward to the walk, to the friendly face that lies at the other end, to Zach's unchanging nature, despite everything they've been through.

Chris picks up his pace as the shadows from the buildings grow longer and darker near dusk, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Without all the color and the sound that once existed all over L.A, even the air seems just a little colder at night.

("All the excitement is gone, that's why," Zach said once, frowning out his window at the street below, at the boxes of illegally obtained movies being stacked into a government truck, "There isn't anything left to keep the city warm."

"What the hell have you been reading?" Chris had asked him, laughing, pulling him away from the window and pointing him in the direction of his kitchenette, where the tea kettle was whistling away.

Zach had shrugged and rolled his eyes, sighing in an overly-dramatic and world-weary way. "Lemon?" he'd asked, and Chris had made a face from across the room.

"Of course," he had said, "how else?")

The books folded into Chris' jacket keep slipping as he walks, and he tucks a hand inside to hold them in place. He brings Zach at least one book as a ritual every time he stops by after work, now.

He hates his job, sorting through seized books and having to burn most of them: all the ones that promote some sort of art, expression, freedom, at least. Basically anything that isn't a modern textbook or government-approved 'historical manuscript'. He started stealing books from the piles when Zach would specifically ask for them; Hemingway, Kafka, Eliot. After a while he just started bringing ones he knew Zach would enjoy.

Zach's apartment, Chris knew, wasn't as monitored as his own. Early on, when the new government had started to take over, banning entertainment first and then all forms of 'unapproved arts', Chris had been outspoken, talked to too many people. He'd gotten in over his head.

Zach had talked, too, had been as displeased has Chris with everything going on, but he'd done it within friends, in safe places. Chris was labeled now, he was unsafe. It's why they'd stuck him working in the book factory after they relocated all the people in the film industry. It was some sort of punishment.

So Zach kept Chris' books too, worked a few times a week shredding film reels one at a time. Zach said he felt fine doing it, knowing that all around the country there were private collections of all the reels, anyway.

Tonight, walking towards Zach's apartment in the early-fall cold, Chris keeps an Arthur Miller anthology and a hilarious looking Star Trek themed cookbook from the 70s, and a few books for himself in his jacket. He walks a little faster the last two blocks to Zach's apartment, humming under his breath as loud as he dares.

  
-

  
Being in Zach's new apartment in the complex is different than being in his own; somehow it seems more like home, a fact Chris doesn't like to dwell on for too long, despite the apartments being almost exactly alike.

Zach, for whatever reason, got to keep his own couch. (Chris is still bitter he had to sell his, and it's not like it was the greatest couch ever or anything, but he definitely spent a long time finding the perfect one and he'd paid way more than he'd ever admit. He probably didn't spend as long finding his as Zach did, though, who always considered furniture choices an extension of his being. Or, Chris doesn't actually know if he thinks that, but it's Zach, so he probably does.)

Zach's living room is small, a mirror of Chris' own, and the walls are painted a sort of shitty burnt orange that streaks along in no sense of a pattern.

("What is that," Chris asked, the first time he walked in with the walls newly painted, "that is not a color. Did you suddenly become colorblind?"

Zach had looked mildly offended, feet curled up underneath him, "It's art," he said, mildly, "I made the paint and did it with a sea sponge."

"You --" Chris started, but faltered. Zach was, just. "I'm not sure if you are just creating an alternate reality in your mind or have joined one of those underground society things that teach you to be all kitsch or whatever --"

"Kitsch. That's a good word," Zach had said, cutting him off and standing. "I'm making tea."

"Did you cultivate the leaves yourself?" Chris had asked, rolling his eyes, but he followed Zach to the kitchenette anyway, running his hand along the burnt-orange-wall as he went, marveling at it, a little.)

His furniture is set up in a way that resembles his old living room, although it's all much closer together. It makes the complex apartment seem homey, almost, where Chris' mostly feels like a dorm room, classy futon and all. At least his place generally smells better than a dorm, though. He hopes.

Zach's apartment smells like tea leaves and all the books he's been gradually been accumulating from Chris. Sometimes when Chris stays late, he catches Zach looking over at his bookshelves with something akin to pride in his eyes, and it makes Chris happy deep in his gut.

Chris ends up spending a lot of time at Zach's (not that he didn't do that before all this, the modern Reformation,) and they talk about how crappy everything is and about all the strange, underground government overthrow plans and how Chris would consider joining one one if they really do exist (to which Zach agrees,) except maybe instead of overthrowing the government directly they'd just put on plays and reinvent Shakespeare.

Chris tries not to think about seeing Zach's picture in the paper, seeing him arrested for being in a group like that. He's been seeing more and more familiar faces splashed across the news, hands cuffed behind their backs, being sent off to God-knows-where.

Usually during these conversations Chris is torn between a) watching Zach's lips move for inappropriate amounts of time, wondering what would happen if he moved closer, maybe felt what Zach's stubble felt like on the tips of his fingers, or b) cutting off Zach with a crazy plan about jumping to action and pulling off a sewer cover to start some underground actor's society of his own.

("Wait, you do know that the term 'underground' is figurative, Chris, right?" "Yeah, no, of course." -- except maybe Chris sort of pictured everyone in an underground society living like ninja turtles, under the city, but okay, whatever, if Zach had to be all figurative and logical about it.)

Chris always goes home and always come back, and sometimes it feels like he could really survive with all these new rules, without his acting, his writing, his art -- if Zach was always there to get through it with him.

  
-

  
Chris works at the book factory -- it's called the Book Reclamation Center, in big ugly letters up against the side, -- four days a week. He works with familiar faces, people filtering in and out, working a few days before moving or being relocated. They can't really talk, there are supervisors out on the floor always listening and always seeing.

(Chris is surprised he hasn't been caught stealing books yet, but he thinks the supervisors don't actually care, or that they might be cataloging every one he takes for a future fine, or for whatever they have against him.)

Six months into the monotony of working there, though, Zoe shows up at the sorting station next to him, protective gloves up to her elbows, her hair down and not as shining as he remembers it.

"Hey you," she says, when she notices him.

Chris is a little shocked and he drops a book, opens his arms wide for Zoe to fold herself into quickly. She has to step back to her station too-fast, and Chris smiles at her, warm.

"What have you been up to?" he asks -- last he'd heard, Zoe had been located in Chicago when the government had separated all of them into their neat little complexes.

"Moving around," she says, grinning back at him. "It's good to see you, though, not getting up to trouble."

"Who, me?" Chris asks, laughing with it. He throws a well-worn Salinger novel into the bin to go to the incinerator, mostly numb to the process by now.

They don't get to talk much while they work, always within earshot of a supervisor walking by.

Zoe tells him about moving home to Jersey within the week, going to live with her parents and work in a grocery store one of her uncles still owns. When they don't see anyone around, she tells him about a dance studio that is still running, where people send their kids in secret at night, and how she is going to teach ballet there, and how somehow everything will work out to be alright.

Her parents are middle-class America, unaffected by all the reformations and changes and relocation besides being denied all the arts and pleasures of years past. She'll be safe there, probably.

  
-

  
They don't really get to say goodbye, but Zoe catches him as they walk out of the building, piling out with the rest of the workers. Chris vaguely recognises a few screenplay writers and a producer who gives him a curt nod.

She pulls him into a hug, light, and frowns up at him. She slips a piece of paper into his palm and steps back.

"I didn't want to give you this," she says, still frowning, "it's not safe and I know you are one of the ones they are watching closely, but. It's a place where things are happening, starting. Go there and -- I don't know anymore, Chris, but if there is someone who could fix this, maybe --"

He nods, half-understanding, and she catches her bus just in time, her smile through the windows just as white as he remembers it, full of more hope than the rest of the street combined.

  
-

  
Chris walks right to Zach's apartment instead of going home to his own, slipping the paper from Zoe into his pocket after glancing at it briefly. It's an address he's familiar with, the theater he always passes on his daily walk to Zach's, the boarded up one with the illegal fliers. It seems fitting for whatever Zoe was talking about.

When Chris gets to Zach's, ("Let yourself in," Zach calls through the door, "and don't expect me to make tea, I'm busy,") Zach is sitting at his kitchen table, papers spread around him.

When they'd first been moved into the apartments, Zach had started writing a play; half out of anger, half out of misplaced inspiration. He'd given up after a while, painted his walls their crazy color and started working his way through Julia Child's _The French Chef_, a book Chris brought him early on.

"Working on your play?" Chris asks, more of a statement than anything as he pulls out the chair opposite Zach, settling heavily into it.

Zach looks up, his old wide-frame glasses slipping down his nose in a motion Chris can't help but follow with his eyes, lower still to where Zach licks at his bottom lip before he smiles. "Not much better to do," he says. His leg kicks out under the table to kick Chris' shin, some sort of incompetent socially-awkward greeting.

(Chris tells him as much.

"I thought you'd be getting sick of, "_Hi, Chris_, by now," Zach says, rolling his eyes.

"Never," Chris says, more intense than the means to, and Zach just smiles at him, hand poised over his notebook sheets.)

"How's writing it going this time around?" Chris asks, serious.

"Alright," Zach says, tapping his pen on the table, "but it would go better with some tea."

Chris kicks at him under the table, misses and kicks the table leg instead. Zach laughs at him, rolling his shoulders back.

"You suck at giving hints," Chris says, but he's already getting up, grabbing Zach's kettle and his tin of tea bags, "Although you know it's never as good as when you make it. I can never get the temperature to seeping time ratio right like you can, and --"

"Chris," Zach says, accompanied by a long suffering sigh, "shut up and just make the tea."

Chris smiles at Zach's line of cabinets, wide enough that he's glad Zach can't see. "Hey," he says, "No orders in the kitchen. I'm the captain here, Spock," an echo of their past that aches a little in Chris' head, in his chest.

Zach hums, low and amused, and Chris makes the tea as best he can, only taking a second to remember which mug is Zach's favorite when he's writing. (It's black, wide at the rim and tapered down, the handle thick and sturdy. On regular days his favorite is the white one with Carnegie Mellon's emblem on it.)

Zach joins him in the living room when the tea is done, taking a break from writing to share the couch.

Chris rubs his fingers over the bit of paper Zoe gave him in his pocket, indecisive. He talks about working with her, how she'd looked and how she had been hopeful for the future.

Zach nods along and they trade memories of her, but Chris doesn't show him the paper with the address. He thinks of Zach being arrested, being carted away and never seeing him again -- his picture in the paper after he'd spent so long keeping low, not interfering. Chris doesn't want to see any of that.

He stands too long in Zach's doorway before he goes. He doesn't let himself acknowledge why he stays so long until he's halfway to his own apartment -- that he stands there maybe a little bit too long every night, hoping that Zach might invite him to stay.

He walks back to his apartment, his futon couch, faster than his legs want him to, protesting with the strain. He lets the cool night air clear his head, just a little.

  
-

  
Chris debates actually going to the meeting. He wants to change everything just as much as he wants to just let someone else do the work, but the country isn't going to fix itself; that much he realizes.

He finds himself walking towards Zach's place in indecision, figuring if he walks past the movie theater, the cheesily-named _Hollywood Golden Palm_, he can just go to Zach's anyway and they can laugh about his ideas of joining an underground society and deciding not to when there were no mentions of sewer-grates whatsoever. Zach would get a kick out of it.

Except, Chris finds himself turning around the back of the movie theater anyway, stopping at where the door is propped ajar with a cinder block.

Someone pokes their head out the door when he steps to open it, and it takes a minute for Chris to realize it's Anton.

They say each other's names at the same time and laugh, Chris slipping in the door so he can squeeze Anton's shoulder. "Hey, kid," he says, trying to peer around in the darkness of the room.

"Hey," Anton agrees, and the fact that he doesn't respond with a quip about Chris calling him kid, however fondly, makes Chris frown a little, following him back through a hallway to a theater where a handful of people dot the dusty red chairs, sloping down towards a torn screen.

"This is only our second time," Anton tells him, quietly as they take a seat, "We're not sure what -- what to do, but." He laughs, sounds older than Chris remembers.

Chris nods and looks around. He recognizes a writer from working on _Unstoppable_ and someone who he thinks looks vaguely like a guy he did a play with, as well as a few other faces that are recognizable in the way that everyone in Hollywood is vaguely familiar with everyone else. Or, used to be.

Chris mostly listens as they talk in rounds, anger and resentment, coping with depression. It seems to be more of a therapy group than a bunch of revolutionaries, but they all talk sense. They all talk about change without really saying anything at all.

He walks home with heavy steps, lays in bed and doesn't sleep. He thinks of the depression, the disillusionment surrounding everything these days, and how he wants to be the one to change it all, even if he knows he'd never be the man for the job. It's how he used to get roles in movies: he might have been good, but 90% of the time there was someone better for the job. It's not something Chris can help.

  
-

  
Chris gets sick of sorting through books, the ache in his wrists, the colorless factory.

He gets to the door of Zach's apartment and being able to recognize the oval-shaped scratch next to the doorknob feels better than anything else all day, even if the moment is overshadowed by the next best part of Chris' day, (the best part of most of his days, now, if he's being honest,) Zach's face in the doorway, half-obscured by a crazy glasses-beanie-gigantic scarf combination.

"I think there are bigger fish in the sea to conquer than bringing back the Williamsburg hipster movement, Zach," Chris tells him by way of greeting.

"I think you just murdered two, maybe three, sayings in one simple sentence," Zach says back, leaving Chris to shut his door.

Chris looks at all the papers spread out over Zach's coffee table with interest as he steps inside the room. "That was definitely a complex sentence," Chris says, sort of an absent rebuttal.

"Just because you have an English degree --" Zach starts, sitting down on his couch, critically peering at the array of papers in front of him. Chris looks down at him and realizes his face must look ridiculous, some combination of fond and exasperated and -- other things Chris doesn't need to get into.

"Means I'm not entitled to be pretentious?" Chris finishes, a little bit of a question.

"No," Zach says, looking up at Chris and smiling, "you can be pretentious. It means you aren't entitled to correct my grammar, because I know I've read through _Elements of Style_ more times than you."

Chris sits down hard on the couch next to him; some of the papers on the table float off.

"I've read the entire dictionary," Chris says, leaning back just as Zach tells him to fuck himself, bending to grab the papers.

"It's a pity you didn't learn anything from it," Zach says, straightening up, but he leans back with an arm over his eyes and the conversation is over, leaving room for Chris to scoot a little closer under the guise of getting comfortable, humming and closing his own eyes, thigh pressed against Zach's.

"I finished my play," Zach says, after a few minutes of comfortable, tired silence.

Chris opens his eyes too fast and has to blink away the light. He turns to Zach, where he's still leaning boneless against the back of the couch with his arm over his eyes. "Really?" Chris asks.

Zach lifts his arm off his eyes just so he can roll them in Chris' direction. "Really," he says. "I haven't slept in 37 hours."

"Sucks to be you," Chris says, and isn't even ashamed of how proud his voice sounds. He knows Zach won't be able to do anything with the play, but he knows the feeling of finishing something, of getting to an end and how Zach's bones must ache with rushes of relief, of pride.

Zach hums a response, low in his throat, and Chris sits silently next to him until he realizes Zach is asleep, making low breathy noises out his nose as he sleeps.

Chris hovers over the coffee table for a few minutes of indecision but grabs Zach's notebook and the array of loose papers at the end, flipping through until he figures out the general order. He reads, grabbing Zach's glasses from the side table and not getting up to see how they look on his face, even though he wants to.

He reads for a few hours, well past the time he'd usually go home, and the living room light flickers out just as he gets to the last few pages. He squints by the light thrown onto the couch all the way from the kitchen and finishes, setting all the papers down neatly on the coffee table.

Zach stirs next to him, sliding down the cushions and blinking up at Chris in a disoriented sort of way when he lands with his head on Chris' thigh.

Chris flicks Zach's hair off his forehead where it's grown long so he can see his eyes better, all late-night affection, the tips of his fingers burning with it, just a little. "I read your play," he says.

Zach shuts his eyes and breathes in, cracking his jaw. "You didn't catch the note at the top that said: _'Chris, don't read this, you jerk'_?" The words come out slowly and low, languid instead of halted.

"Must have missed that one," Chris says, laughing low in his throat, fingers still in Zach's hair.

Zach makes a sleep-heavy noise in his throat and leans up just enough to push at Chris' shoulders, letting gravity pull him down the couch so Zach can fit in next to him, eyes already closing.

Chris holds still and tries not to breathe too much, letting Zach fall asleep with his head tucked over Chris' shoulder, tired and warm. He lets his fingers stay in Zach's hair and stares at the ceiling, at the shadow they make as they run over Zach's scalp, dancing in the light.

  
-

  
Chris goes to the next meeting at the movie theater a week later, not out of any sort of obligation or inspiration, but out of curiosity. He wants to know if people will start having ideas, if one of them will start making sense and start a chain reaction. (If one day he won't have to work in the book factory, if one day he can get his old house back and insist that Zach just save him the trip and move in with him, take over his kitchen, his couch, his bed --

One day, maybe.)

The crowd gathered isn't much bigger than the previous time, but they sit in circular fashion as best as they can in the rows of neatly-lined seats.

Everyone talks in much the same way, this time round robin fashion, and when it gets to Chris, he falters.

He decides on honesty, after a while. "Someone has to do something," he says, to which the people he can see next to him nod.

"It would take something with impact," Chris continues, looking around at the gathered faces as he talks, all of them tired in a way he sees mirrored in himself every time he stands in his bathroom and stares just a little too long, "something that could happen everywhere, something that could connect us all."

He's not sure what he's saying, only that he has a feeling, looking at all these faces in his day-to-day life, how all these people have lost a part of themselves, how nothing can be done to stop the establishment from banning art, banning expression and entertainment.

"What if we could make it so there was a day where a group of us, of people who wanted to, put on a performance in every city we could get the word to? A play, a concert, artists painting in the streets, anything and everything. They wouldn't have enough manpower to stop it in every city, the word would spread and maybe -- maybe it would all change from there."

Chris laughs, a little, at the end. He sounds stupid to his own ears, a child campaigning for change in the school cafeteria. Everyone in the room looks rapt, though, nodding.

They go off that, Chris sitting and listening, head working too fast for him to keep up.

Somehow, when it's over, Chris walks home, feet heavy, feeling like he's been newly instated as a leader. A leader of what, he isn't sure, only that his shoulders feel heavy with it and he wants to go to Zach's apartment, not his own. He wants to change everything just as much as he wants to fall asleep to Zach pressed warm and heavy against his side again, while the morning creeps ever-closer, when it's time to wake up from it all.

  
-

  
Chris doesn't make it to Zach's, he goes home instead. The night air feels strange around him, almost like he's being watched -- like someone knows what he said in the back of the movie theater about wanting change. (Like everyone Chris knows doesn't want the same exact change, too. It's paranoia, and isn't that the stage where the bad things start happening in movies? Chris doesn't think about it.)

He sleeps restless again, forgoing taking off anything more than his pants and laying in bed with his sweater bunched up around his neck. It smells like the room in the movie theater, all the dust and disuse. If Chris still harbored allusions of being a writer, he'd say the sweater smelled like hope, like inspiration. (Which, as Zach would probably tell him if he ever admitted that, _is exactly why you aren't a writer, Pine_, which would maybe sting, just a little, but Zach would laugh with his whole body and he'd make something delicious to eat, something that would inevitably become Chris' favorite, and that would make up for it.)

In the morning there is a sticky note on the front side of his apartment door that the notices when he walks out. _'I'm In - AY'_ it says, in a spiking scrawl. Chris frowns at it for a second but crumples it and tucks it into his pocket.

He gets another note a work, somewhat the same, and takes the pair home and puts them on his fridge, a little puzzled.

  
-

  
The week drags on, work, day off, work, work, and Zach's almost nightly for some sort of dinner and reading time. (They've been reading through Zach's play, and Chris is constantly amazed at how it flows, how Zach should have been doing this sort of thing all along. He wants to say that, not let any of the pride in his voice falter, but he hasn't found the right junction.)

As he goes through the week, Chris gets a handful or fistful of notes each day. _'New York is in_' one says. Chris doesn't know where they are coming from, although he recognizes some initials from the movie theater group.

When he goes to the third meeting there are more seats filled, and he brings up the notes, not even realizing how everyone is paying such close attention to him.

"Your idea is spreading," a woman in the back says, her face brighter than Chris has seen it in any of the meetings. He thinks she is one of the Deschanel sisters, but he can't remember which one. "The notes are confirmation of that, at least."

"My idea," Chris repeats, after a second -- coming together, making a difference, inspiring change. He tries to remember his speech from the week before, how it had seemed to click just a little something into place. "The performances and -- all that."

"I got one from Chicago," Anton provides, "a note. They're waiting on a date."

Chris nods, feeling vaguely like he's just fallen into something big, something probably a little dangerous. "A date," he agrees, and it's hard to sound hesitant when there are so many faces focused on him, although his voice tries it's hardest to stick in his throat. Chris thinks of the stage, of performing in front of an audience. "We can set a date, yeah."

That night, people walk back with him as far as they can, talking in low voices about contacting people, friends. Chris nods along all the way through the door to his apartment and he falls asleep with a history book open in his lap.

  
-

  
Chris starts getting notes daily from people, just people who pass them on to him at work, on the street. They come from cities and individuals and places Chris hasn't even heard of.

It's true social networking, a kind which Chris is amazed still exists. He sticks them all on his fridge and when he runs out of space there, he starts taping them up on the cabinets. He really hopes there isn't a surprise inspection of his apartment, as much as he wouldn't put it past the government, because the notes sort of make him giddy to look at, like they all mean something.

He finds a date -- December 26th, the date of the first full-length motion picture in 1906, and also around the only holiday Chris knows the government will never be able to try and block, for whatever asinine reason they come up with. He knows people will be excited, inspired, and he's set on using it. Sort of proud, even, that he thought of it. He saves it, though, waiting until the next meeting, and the night before goes over Zach's, something he'd done less over the past week and was starting to feel the effects of, the realization of missing the familiarly of Zach all the way through his bones.

When he gets to Zach's the door is open, and Zach calls him into the kitchenette.

He's in an apron. It's bright green with what looks like a horn of plenty on it, but Chris can't see from his angle. He also has what looks like the 1970's Star Trek-themed cookbook Chris stole for him propped up on the counter. Chris laughs a little, fond.

"Food," he says, instead of a greeting, drawing the vowel sound out and sniffing exaggeratedly at the stove. It smells mostly like onions, but softer.

"You're barbaric," Zach says. He smiles at Chris. "What's been keeping you away?" he asks.

Chris doesn't have a good explanation so he just waves his hand vaguely. Zach rolls his eyes; he has bits of something that looks like parsley on his cheek, like he'd gotten over-exuberant with the shaker.

Chris reaches out, thinking about flicking it off Zach's cheek just to see his grumpy face in juxtaposition with the ridiculous apron, but the thought gets lost in translation somewhere in his brain. Instead his hand sort of cups the side of Zach's face, turning him nearer as Chris uses his thumb to wipe the parsley flakes off.

Stuck watching his own hand move, barely acknowledging the feeling of Zach's skin under the pad of his thumb, Chris sucks in a breath that sticks in his throat. He takes his hand back, watching Zach watch him with a mixture if interest and something else, something more serious. Chris looks at the flecks of green on his thumb and darts it to his mouth to lick them off, salty skin and then something with more bite, the parsley. Zach's nostrils flare when he takes in a breath that looks like it doesn't quite work right.

"Parsley," Chris says, barely a breath outward. He takes a step backwards, belatedly realizing he's too close, his thoughts running five different directions --

Zach pulls him back by his neck, hands hot and dry on Chris' skin; he pushes Chris back into the edge of the counter and kisses him, lips hot and dry against Chris' slick ones. It takes a second to find the angle and then Zach is licking hot inside his mouth, rolling Chris' bottom lip between his own before Chris can catch up, pressing back up into Zach, the edge of the counter biting into his back at the same time in a way that is not entirely unpleasant.

"Fuck," Zach says, pushing back. Chris chin is burning. There is no physically possible way his lips actually belong to his body.

They both lean against opposite sides of the counter, breathing almost in time. The soup on the burner starts to make an unpleasant sizzling noise and Zach turns fast to check on it, Chris left watching the lines of his back

"So, I hope you like your Plomeek Soup a little burnt," Zach says after a minute, like Chris isn't still leaning against the counter across from the stove, unsure how to get his various limbs to move, lips parted and shoulders up. "I got sick of Julia Child -- This is supposedly Vulcan and probably bland, but I couldn't resist."

"I'm always up for trying new things," Chris says after a pause where Zach clears his throat. Chris can see little fading red marks Zach's throat and he looks down at his fingers, wondering if he made them. He has to look away when Zach turns to him, eyes amused, because Chris didn't mean it like that -- even if he did, even if he hasn't been kissed in what feels like years, and even if he's never been so aware of all the nerve endings located on his lips.

"Well," Zach says, turning back, stirring the soup languidly. "That's good to know, isn't it?"

Chris rolls his eyes, sucks his breath back into his stomach and steals Zach's stiring spoon to pop in his mouth. It's really, really hot. His eyes water. "Hot," he says, numbly, popping the spoon back out. Zach laughs at him, has to lean on the counter to hold himself up.

Chris swats at his arm. "Asshole," he says, more endearing than he means it to be.

Zach pats him on the shoulder and Chris feels it all through his body.

Chris is on edge all through his soup, sitting across from Zach at the table. Their conversation is still easy, but Chris feels awkward in his skin, too-aware of his jeans, the folds of his shirt against his stomach.

He goes home after the soup, Zach leaning in his own doorway to watch Chris walk down the hall; Chris knows, because he turns back at the end of look at Zach's door, face open and probably showing too much, not expecting Zach to be looking right back at him.

He falls asleep thinking of Zach's mouth, his hands on his neck, the press of Zach's belt into his hipbone and the bite of the counter against his back.

  
-

  
Chris goes to work the next day and then the meeting after. The number of people in the room has more than tripped since the first meeting Chris walked into on Zoe's urging.

He's a little late and when he takes a seat next to Anton in the front row, turning back to look at everyone dotting chairs through out the room. When he sits, they all turn to look at him.

"Did you come up with a date?" Anton asks, first thing, his eyes bright and excited like Chris remembers him.

Chris sucks in a breath and grins, wide and bright. "December 26th," he says, watching as the people in the room shift, as something changes. Chris explains why he chose the date and what it means, and is almost tripped up by the amount of unswerving attention on him, the strange sense of excitement radiating in his direction.

After he's done speaking, he starts getting more confirmations: scribbled notes passed down to him so he can read them out loud, people standing and vouching for this person or that city.

"New York is all set," someone says, and another vouches on behalf of Robert Downey Jr, someone on behalf of George Clooney -- like they've all got little movie theater groups like Chris', all ready for the call to action. Someone sends confirmation from Zoe, and Chris thinks of all the little ballet students she must be teaching and it makes him grin even wider.

They've got two months until December 26th.

Chris sleeps better than he has in weeks.

  
-

  
Chris goes to Zach's apartment the next day in the early afternoon, toying with the idea of telling Zach about what is going on. He's unsure all the way there, steps lighter and lighter the closer he gets to Zach's complex.

One the one hand, Chris wants Zach to share this with him; the excitement, the (hopefully) eventual triumph that Chris can feel in his bones almost as well as he can feel the blood in his veins.

On the other, he doesn't want to admit keeping it from him for so long. He doesn't want to admit his reasons; his silly reasoning that he can keep Zach safe, he can protect him. He'd have to admit too much, and he's not as good with words as he'd like to think half the time, especially when it comes with feelings not already laid out like a plan in a script.

Zach opens his door before Chris can make up his mind either way, though, his face twisted up in a half a smile. "Don't mind the fact my chair is in front of the door," Zach says, pulling Chris inside with a hand on his shoulder, pressing down hard, "I wasn't waiting for you to get here or anything -- the door provides a nice change of scenery, and --"

"Zach," Chris says, torn between amused and breathless. He can't even see the chair, doesn't know what Zach is talking about, only that Zach has him pressed against the wall next to the door and that he can see Zach's face clearer than he ever has before.

Zach stays still, hovering over him, both hands pressing Chris' shoulders into the wall.

"If you say --" Zach starts, but he stops and looks away from Chris' face, instead looking at the wall next to him. Chris watches him with interest.

"If you say no," Zach says, starting over, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth in a way that makes Chris' eyes go unfocused for a second, "I have potato pancakes on the stove. I have tea and coffee and water, and maybe some sour cream, but I forgot to check, and --"

"Zach," Chris says, again, watching Zach's mouth shut, catching his eyes as they slip down to meet Chris'.

"I recommend saying no," Zach says after a second, voice low and serious. "Chris," he says, "I'd --"

"Like hell," Chris says, because it's the first thing that comes to his mind and the thing that makes the most sense.

Zach tenses, his arms going slack for a second where they are holding Chris against the wall, so Chris pulls himself up a little and uses his hands to haul Zach forward, a groan slipping out before he even gets to Zach's lips, just from being able to pull at his shirt, dig his fingers into the hair at the nape of Zach's neck.

This time it's Zach that takes a minute to respond, snapping his hips forward and dropping one of his arms down to Chris' hip, squeezing. He slips one of his own legs in-between Chris' with enough forcesthat it presses him back against the wall as Zach licks at the outside seam of Chris' lips.

Chris isn't entirely sure how they make it past the couch, because he sure as hell knows he's pulling Zach towards it, not wanting to waste time to make it to the bedroom. He feels Zach laugh against his neck, checks into reality when they make it next to Zach's bed, the both of them shirtless, Zach with little clusters of red nail and teeth marks dotting his chest and upper arms where the skin is smooth and pale.

Chris' own skin feels inhumanly hot. Zach looks at him openly with dark eyes as he shimmies out of his own jeans, in a way that would be funny (and has been in the past) under any other circumstances.

"Is it weird," Zach says, standing suddenly and -- amazingly naked, Chris' brain supplies, out of appropriate adjectives, and he'd make a self-depreciating joke about not learning anything from the dictionary to hear Zach laugh, except Zach's hands are on his chest, down his sides, un-zipping his jeans.

Zach doesn't finish, but Chris groans his agreement to whatever Zach was going philosophize about, anyway, as soon as Zach gets his hand down Chris' boxers, curling his fingers around his dick.

"Probably," Chris says, saying something just to prove he can still use the English language. Zach runs two fingers down the side of his neck, down the center of his chest and to the side, brushing over a nipple. Chris helps himself out of his boxers and his socks, backing up until the back of his knees hit the edge of Zach's bed.

Zach leans in to kiss him, practically chaste, the feeling of his lips lingering as he ducks down to take Chris' nipple into his mouth, sucking between and around his fingers. It's just enough pressure and bite for Chris to fall all the way back onto the bed, shifting vertical as quickly as he can so Zach can lean over top of him.

Chris runs his hands down Zach's back, leaning up so he can see the line of his spine, how it slopes down into the swell of his ass, within reach of Chris' hands. Chris scratches a little as he lets his fingers roam, reveling in the sensations, in the way Zach is using his mouth along his chest, up his jawline.

Chris palms at Zach's ass, rubbing his thumbs in circles in a way that makes Zach groan into his ear and pull himself up, settling quick so he can grind down on Chris' cock with his own, hard quick pressure that has Chris bucking upwards, running his hands forward to try and pull Zach back down by his hips.

Zach bites dully at Chris' bottom lip and rolls out of reach, pulling his body up to kiss Chris deep and hot before sliding down. He settles in between Chris' knees, pulling them out and up a little by his calves -- Chris sits up against Zach's headboard as much as he can manage; closing his eyes for a second just because he has to, seeing Zach leaning down, feeling his hand curl around the base of Chris' dick, warm and much larger than what Chris is used to. It's all --

"Zach," Chris says, because it's the only word in his head that makes sense.

"Chris," Zach says back, and he sounds entirely too smug about it, dipping his head down to take just the tip of Chris' dick between his lips, using just his tongue to press lightly and slide.

Chris -- Chris totally has amazing oral skills, he'd have Zach know. Just to stop him from looking so smug, eyes up and looking right at Chris where he's breathing in backwards. He'd say something too, if he could, but Zach will see soon and then he won't be so smug, and --

Chris moans, higher than he expects, head pressing back into Zach's pillow as he slides down the headboard a little, Zach taking him down in his mouth to where his fist is wrapped around. He keeps going and then pulls off, abruptly, Chris' thighs tensing with the flash of coolness that hits him.

"Hold yourself," Zach says, low and gravelly, and Chris sits up a little more again and licks at his own lips, dry with the heavy breaths he's been trying to take. He wraps his own hand around his cock unquestioningly, squeezing at the base and resisting the urge to jerk himself off, even though he's close enough already; Zach looks at him like he knows and Chris curls the side of his mouth up and shrugs one shoulder.

Zach shakes his head and Chris recognizes the quirk of Zach's mouth as fondness, easy enough to spot when Chris can feel it mirrored on his own lips half the time he's around Zach, daily. He can feel a flush spreading down his neck and chest, a trait that's damned him since high school, but Zach looks up from where he's bent at the edge of the bed -- with lube, Chris sees, having been too focused on Zach's face -- and smiles, small.

"That's --" Zach says, and he reaches up, trails two dry fingers down Chris' chest where it's bloomed splotchy red.

Chris grabs Zach's wrist with his free hand, tugs Zach's arm up so he can angle Zach's fingers between his lips, sucking them down and dragging his lips, swiping his tongue in between them.

He watches Zach's eyes shut and then open, heavy, waits for the low, gravely groan low in Zach's chest before pulling Zach's two fingers from between his lips, rolling his tongue over the tips of them and then letting go.

"Your mouth," Zach says, barely getting it out in a breath.

Chris nods, grinning quick up at Zach. He opens his mouth to say something -- anything his mind can provide, at this point -- but Zach trails his two newly spit-slicked fingers along the inside of Chris' thigh and then between, pressing lightly against the cleft of his ass and then dragging, pressing in shallowly.

Chris lets his head fall back into the pillows, turning to bite into his own pillowcase when Zach removes his hand to use the other, a lube-slick finger slipping inside him with ease, all hot pressure. Zach laughs, a low, pleasant noise -- Chris doesn't know if it's because of how he looks (he can imagine) or the situation itself, but doesn't care.

He presses his hips down as far as he can, Zach leaning down again to take Chris' dick between his lips, Chris glad for his own hand around, able to squeeze tight as his eyes roll back, Zach fucking -- fucking groaning around his dick.

Chris uses his heels against the mattress to fuck himself down onto Zach's fingers, two then three. Zach brushes Chris' hand away in time to match the rhythm of his fingers with his other hand around Chris' dick in a motion that makes Chris buck into Zach's throat, curling his newly freed hand into the still-long hair on Zach's head, coming into his mouth, body numb with it.

Zach settles up to lick and kiss at Chris' lips until he's regained enough sense of awareness to kiss back, twisting up and around Zach and sliding down his body without much preamble to suck him off. He's sloppy and fast, barely strong enough post-orgasm to keep Zach's hips down on the bed. Zach is loud when he comes, the roughness of his voice trailing itself over all of Chris' exposed skin.

Zach curls an arm around Chris' shoulder when they find each other at the top of the bed, bent upwards so he can twist bits of hair, sticky against Chris' neck, between his fingers.

  
-

  
In the morning, Chris wakes up slowly, aware gradually of the liquid, not unpleasant ache in his bones, of a body -- _Zach_ \-- against his side, all hot skin, just a little slick with sweat.

He can feel Zach wake up slowly next to him, can hear the shifts in breathing and feel his small, testing movements. Chris is struck with how he can finally feel that, how he can know how it feels to have Zach drag his lips down Chris' neck first thing in the morning. It's pretty amazing.

"Is it stupid to ask you to stay forever?" Zach asks, stretching with his legs, the words heavy with morning languidness against Chris' neck.

"When it sounds like something from a five dollar paperback at WalMart, probably," Chris tells him, arching his neck back so Zach can drag his teeth down the column of skin there. His throat is dry, and when Zach drags his teeth he scrapes lightly along something that feels like a fresh bruise. Chris stretches, doesn't even pretend not to be luxuriating in it, in all the feelings.

"Oh, thanks," Zach says. Chris closes his eyes and can almost see Zach rolling his eyes against Chris' side.

They stay quiet for a while. Chris rubs circles into Zach's lower back with his thumb at an odd angle that has Zach making periodic low noises in his throat, pleased.

"You should ask me anyway," Chris says, even though the moment has passed and he doesn't even really know what he's saying. He'll stay for as long as Zach wants him to, and if Zach never asks him to leave, well -- Chris wouldn't mind in the least.

Zach hums and Chris can feel it down his spine. "Will you?" Zach asks.

There isn't any light in the room now, just the sense that Chris has Zach within reach and he doesn't have to know where Zach starts and ends, as long as he's there. Chris rolls to his side and leans down, first finding the top of Zach's nose; he drags his lips down until he finds Zach's own, fitting his in-between, and Zach pulls him closer with an arm around his shoulder, their teeth clicking as they both try to smile at once.

  
-

  
Chris walks home and barely notices his surroundings. Everything feels brighter, more colorful, despite the usual lack of anything interesting or remotely expressive.

It takes him about halfway back to his house to notice the addition of little bits of graffiti all along the store fronts, especially the ones that are boarded up.

When Chris steps closer to see them, he smiles. _'Make a Difference: Twelve-Twenty-Six'_, they say, some hand written and some white spray paint on stencils. Chris sits against the wall of a boarded up video rental place and takes a minute to picture the phrase written all over the country, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people seeing it. People getting excited for something they don't even have a clue about.

He walks all the way home grinning, and doesn't even care that he has to run all the way to work after he changes -- hey, cardio -- and sort through books for six hours.

  
-

  
They've got a month, three more meetings before the 26th. With each meeting edging towards the date, the atmosphere in the theater grows loud and excited at each weekly meeting, buzzing with a hum of energy that, to Chris, is practically tangible.

Chris has the meetings and all the confirmations of places around the country that are setting up exhibitions and performances and showcases: movies in the park, concerts on rooftops, a play under weeping willows.

More importantly, though, he has Zach, always waiting in his apartment, or always surprised when he gets out of work and Chris is waiting for him on the couch, or on the bed.

For all the oppression and horrible changes in the year past, Chris goes to sleep with Zach draped over him like a personal heater every night and he can't help but be the happiest he's ever remembered being with everything going on.

(Zach understands the happiness; he shares it, he writes more and he hums low in his throat when he's cooking, and Chris even finds a place still publishing new work underground to publish Zach's play as a sort of surprise to be mailed to him.)

With everything, though, Chris still doesn't know if he's doing the right thing about keeping Zach in the dark about the meetings. He feels guilty, maybe, feels something in the pit of his stomach, but he knows he'd feel worse if anything ever backfired and something happened to Zach. Nothing could ever happen to him; to them; and Chris would make sure of it.

  
-

  
Chris passes Anton in the street two weeks into December and gets a note: _'LA ready'_, which almost surprises him. He figured they were the only group in LA, but it makes sense, suddenly, that there would be more than one group of people organizing something for the 26th in a city, and the amount of people involved when Chris sits down and thinks about it is almost overwhelming.

He goes back to his apartment after work, intending to spend a few hours going over his maps and notes before Zach gets off of work and Chris can meet him at his apartment. He spreads out everything, the notes from the fridge and the cabinets and everywhere else he could find space all get taped to the wall, the coffee table, the arms of the futon. He gets out a map of the US and a box of push pins he'd taken from Zach's junk drawer in the kitchen and starts pushing pins into each city and down he has a note from.

The dots sprawl out across the entire map, more than he can count, and Chris steps back to look at his handiwork. Above the map he pins up one of the stencils someone had left behind at a meeting, edged with white spray paint.

He gets a knock on his door as he's crouching down to read a note from New York, and goes to open it before he can think, intuitively knowing it's Zach.

"Missed you," Zach says, eyes bright when Chris opens the door, "I got out of work early and then I remembered you only live 15 minutes away and that I never come visit."

"Sadly true," Chris says, nodding, letting Zach push him through his own doorway, close the door and lean him up against it.

"Good plan" Chris comment, letting Zach pull away after leaning toward him, a tease, and grab his hand, pulling him towards the couch.

"I'm full of them," Zach tells him, grinning.

Chris feels a little bit like he could fall right there towards his living room floor and Zach would catch him no matter what -- a stupid, amazing feeling, even over a month old. He's always felt that way in some capacity about Zach, just as friends and as more. Zach will catch him. He nips at the underside of Zach's jaw, presses his grin there.

There's a crunch of paper on the floor as they move. Chris looks down as Zach lets him go, looking down at all the notes and papers spread out over Chris' floor, up his walls, the ones under his feet.

"You've been busy," Zach says, hand trailing over Chris' hip, distracting.

"I have," Chris agrees, distracted, stepping closer, wanting to continue their journey back to a play they can lay down as soon as possible.

Zach bends down, though, and something in Chris' throat rises just a little, a warning.

"What is all this?" Zach asks, picking up a note: '_New York is go for 12/26_'. He reads it out loud and looks up at Chris with an eyebrow raised.

"Twelve twenty-six?" Zach repeats, questioning. All the graffiti on the streets with stenciled on phone booths and boarded up stores flash around in Chris' mind, all the graffiti that Zach has to have seen but never commented on.

"'The Story of the Kelly Gang'," Chris says, faltering just a little, "from Australia, known to be the first ever full-length motion picture, it's an iconic--"

"You're involved with this?" Zach asks, frowning, standing up from his crouch and staring at the map on Chris' wall, all the pins sticking out, too many to count.

"I--" Chris starts. He wants to say yes, to tell Zach how involved he is, how much everything is going to change from now on, how sorry he is he didn't involve Zach. He wants to tell him his reasons, why he didn't want Zach involved, '_to keep you safe, because I'm a little bit in love with you. Stupid, right?_'

"All this time?" Zach asks, stepping back farther. His voice is quieter, now, lacking the amusement from before.

"I started it," Chris says, honest, voice low. "It just happened, and there were too many people to keep up with and we set a date and -- everything happened at once."

"So you're a revolutionary now," Zach says, almost cutting off Chris' rush of words. His voice is dropped, hard.

"Sort of," Chris says, "I guess." He shrugs, maybe he is, maybe he'll help make history, change everything back. It's all a guessing game, at this point.

"What am I?" Zach asks, his face gone unreadable. Chris feels like he's lost track of the last ten minutes rather rapidly.

"You're --" Chris starts; Zach is everything to him, more than anything 12/26. He's the face Chris wants to wake up next to for the rest of forever, the best tea-maker in town, the most inspiring person Chris knows.

Zach nods at him, curt. "I'm obviously not important enough to have been clued in," he says. He's frowning. "Not important enough for you to tell me about something this big -- something that could get you killed."

Zach is moving towards the door, and fuck -- "It couldn't get me killed," Chris says, which is the only thing he can think to say to get Zach to stop moving. "It's --"

"They've killed four so far. 'Revolutionaries,'" Zach says, and Chris wants to laugh fondly at his airquotes, but it's not the time, and Zach is in his doorway, back turned. "Chris don't -- don't be next," Zach says, and then he's slamming the door shut behind him.

Chris sinks down into his couch and stares at the map against the wall and doesn't know what the hell just happened.

  
-

  
There's a meeting that night and Chris doesn't go. He gathers up his notes and stuffs them all in a big plastic garbage back, tears the map off the wall, watching the pins pop off and scatter on his carpet with no sense of order or function; chaotic.

He sits on his couch and thinks about the pins as being the cities on the 26th, of every one of the shows and exhibits and concerts failing, of everything being for nothing. He doesn't want to turn on the news or grab a newspaper and see a thousand people paying for his stupid idea, his trying to beat the 90% chance that there was someone better to do the job, just like when he was acting.

Anton stops by late, knocking and then just entering the apartment, peering around until Chris looks up at him and waves him in. Zach hadn't locked the door. Chris hasn't been off the couch since he left, fuck.

"We missed you at the meeting," Anton says, frowning into the darkness of Chris' living room. "Only one more left after this."

Chris makes a rough sort of sound he hopes translates into acknowledgment.

Anton sits next to him on the couch. "John was there," he says, speaking slow, "he wanted to say hi, check in on behalf of Seattle."

"Great," Chris says, and has a tough time not making it sarcastic. He's not sure he succeeds.

"I'm just going to --" Anton gets up and walks back to the door, pausing in the doorway. Chris thinks of Zach in the doorway and has to look away.

"I'll come back tomorrow," Anton says, "when you feel better. It's all going to be so great, you'll see."

The door shuts softly behind him and Chris falls asleep on the couch, sleeping fitfully and shallowly.

  
-

  
Anton does come back the next day, and on the 22nd, and on the 23rd, and on the 24th.

"Shouldn't you be with you family tonight?" Chris asks him from his nest on the couch -- which Chris can't bring himself to care about -- frowning up at where Anton is standing, cheeks flushed red with cold.

"I am," Anton says. He sighs and sinks into Chris' armchair. "You are my family. All of the people at the theater are my family. All of the people participating on the 26th are my family. See? All of us."

Chris takes a sip of the water next to him, even though he can't remember how it got there. "So go be with them," Chris says.

Anton shakes his head; Chris knows he should feel affronted by that, or undermined, or something, but he just sinks down a little further into the couch.

"Come to the last meeting tomorrow," Anton says, standing. "Come celebrate with us the next day. We need you -- you are the leader."

"Not anymore," Chris says, and Anton leaves. He almost feels bad.

Chris has vivid dreams of celebration, of everything dancing around him -- the streets are bright with color and strange excitement, but he's not joining in. People are looking at him funny, people are --

Someone snaps in his face to wake him up, long, harsh fingers. Chris opens his eyes and struggles to find his balance in the couch cushions. He stares up at Zoe above him with squinty eyes, heavy with sleep.

"Zoe," he says, scratchy.

"No shit," she says back, but it's with a small smile. It's endearing.

"What're you --" Chris starts.

Zoe cuts him off, throws the covers off him. "Anton and John told me you've been moping," she says, "and tomorrows the most important day of your life, so you're going to get your ass up and stop being a baby."

Chris frowns at her and tries to snatch the covers back. "It's not going to work," he says, "none of it is."

Zoe rolls her eyes and pulls Chris up by an arm, something he thinks the laws of physics are supposed to defy, or whatever. "You tell that to the few million people turning up around the country tomorrow," she says. "Now go get dressed."

"Millions?" Chris asks, wanting to know her reasoning for thinking that many people would turn up. She pushes him forward, though, and Chris obeys sort of on principle, because Zoe can get scary and also because he kind of missed her. He gets dressed and tries not to think about how his favorite jacket is still over Zach's and how Zach has probably left and how his life really, really sucks.

When he comes out of his room she hands him an apple and herds him out the door, and Chris' muscles protest at the movement. He tries to remember how many days he sat on the couch, trying to think really hard about Zach coming through his front door and hoping it would happen; he'd turned into every cliche romance novel on the shelf at WalMart and -- it was for Zach, so he didn't even care.

It's almost dusk, which Chris didn't realize, and he finds himself comforted by the familiar faces, doubled in number, that await him in the theater.

He's not comfortable or on par at all, but he sees Zoe's face relax and start to brighten as the meeting goes on and Chris lets himself speak, try to be inspiring just for the people gathered around.

He still believes in the cause, he just -- he'd give it all up in a split second just to be where he was a week ago. Or two weeks. He really isn't sure how much time he spent on the couch, stuck in his head.

  
-

  
Chris doesn't try to sleep that night. Instead, he stays up with Zoe, drinking and explaining his recent misfortunes. (He doesn't refer to them as 'recent misfortunes' until the third or fourth beer, when he decides the rest of the conversation would be easier if he pretended he was Mr. Darcy, and Zach was Elizabeth, which Zoe said was all wrong and backwards, but Chris wasn't having it.) She's always good for that, though and Chris had forgotten how easy it was to tell her things, to be comforted by her understanding nods.

He wakes up in the morning, face smushed into his couch pillows, and Zoe is gone. She left out water and asprin though, so Chris doesn't find it in himself to be mad.

He gets dressed feeling marginally less hollow than the previous day and sets out to walk around the city, to see what is going on.

When he walks outside, a young girl runs past, smiling. "Happy 26th," she calls, and he waves at her, suddenly a little excited to see what the day has to offer.

He passes some police, but they aren't doing much. He passes a stage with some dancers, a guy playing cello a block from his apartment, and one person selling books that look like they were stolen from the Book Reclamation Center. Chris gives him a particularly exuberant thumbs up.

He walks around for what seems like hours, far from his apartment and then circling back. The city is alive, buzzing with color and people and music, art.

It's so weird to think that they'd ever been made to live without it all, that a group of people could hold enough power to suddenly take it all the way. It seems as if it was so easy to get back. Chris sees all the people he knows from the meetings and more; people he hasn't seen in months, friends, colleagues.

He runs into Zoe at dusk and she laughs at him for having a Sno-Cone, his tongue dyed blue from the flavored ice.

"Come here, I've been looking for you," she says, pulling him around a block to the little park next to Zach's apartment complex.

He follows and sits down on the grass with her in front of a stage. Four actors come out and sit, and it takes Chris a split second to recognize one of them as Zach -- he's staring down at Chris on the grass and Chris twists his face into more than one expression at once, indecisive, and probably looks ridiculous, all the rush of the day coming to him at once.

"Zach," Chris mouths, lips curling up into a wide smile and then back down, hesitant.

Zach purses his lips and then grins, quick and light, just for Chris. He nods, once, and Chris only keeps from running up on stage while they perform Zach's play because Zoe has a hand on his knee, steadying.

  
-

  
Chris has to jump the stage to get to the back of it after the performance. He has a million things he wants to say, all of them running through his head at once as he peers through the night to find Zach by the little light afforded by a streetlamp.

He sees Zach, looking right at him, both of them paused in their expression. All the words in Chris' head disappear. "Zach, he says, full and loud against the buzz of noise all around them.

"You are such an idiot," Zach says, darting forward and holding Chris' face with both his hands.

"I know," Chris agrees, with the distinct impression that he's repeating it like a mantra.

Zach kisses him, hard and dry.

"I just wanted you to be, fuck, I don't know -- safe. I didn't want anything to happen to you," Chris says. He doesn't know how to say it, but he wants Zach to know.

"I don't care," Zach says, hands slipping down to Chris' waist. "I thought you were stupid, ready to get yourself killed."

"I didn't think of it like that," Chris says. He rests his hands on Zach's hips, warm. Behind Zach's head some fireworks start, blue red green against the night stay, the brightest colors L.A. has seen in months.

"I know you didn't," Zach says, laughing low, "because you don't think about yourself." He pulls Chris closer, turns them around so they can both see the fireworks, pressing Chris' back against his chest and leaning against a pole near the makeshift stage.

"Luckily," Zach says, after they watch the explosions for a minute, "that's why you have me. I can think about us both."

Chris lets the words sink in, work themselves into his bones. "Such a good multitask-er," he says, agreeing, tilting his head back, a hopeful invitation for Zach to kiss him.

Zach leans in and does just that, and somewhere in the distance Chris can hear Zoe yelling, excited.

Zach makes a small, thoughtful noise when he leans back again. "Is this the end?" he asks, low in Chris' ear.

"I'd like to think it's the beginning," Chris says, grinning wide, "but from a philosophical view point, I guess everything has to come full circle, so --"

"Shut up," Zach says, leaning forward to kiss him again. And again.


End file.
